6 ms·

> So essentially changing diet is partly (or mostly) a placebo effect. IMO it is better to understand the causes of IBS/anxiety/stress and make changes to your

> So essentially changing diet is partly (or mostly) a placebo effect. IMO it is better to understand the causes of IBS/anxiety/stress and make changes to your lifestyle that address the root cause, rather than believing dubious science about gluten. That sounds very much like the approach a software/hardware engineer would have towards a bug. And it's great! However, I'd say that the human body can't really be approached that way because of its, very much, inconstant nature (at least until we've figured out 100% how our bodies function). In the current state of knowledge human kind has about biology, it would be very hard to pin-point a "bug" (IBS/stress/anxiety for example) to a specific root cause (bacteria x or y). On the opposite end, a software bug ultimately has one (or multiple) very much identifiable root causes. All that to say that, it might not be possible to understand the causes of IBS/anxiety/stress, and thus, treating the symptoms might actually be the cure. (who knows, maybe treating a "biological bug" fixes the actual bug?) It's also a chicken and egg problem: which started first? IBS or stress/anxiety?

cpncrunch 12y ago
Yes, it's a little more difficult pinning down problems with the human body than in a piece of code, and these kind of functional problems even seem to have stumped most of the medical profession. However I see it as an engineering challenge. Essentially you are looking at a complex system and trying to solve a problem in a piece of machinery that you don't have any information about. Sometimes working around bugs in android or iOS can involve similar detective work. In terms of IBS, there is very little doubt that in my own situation that stress causes the IBS rather than the other way around. Diarrhea during the week, followed by constipation during weekends. Or diarrhea preceeding before a novel event. These are repeatable and predictable - it just requires taking a close look at your situation and seeing if you can see any correlations. Unfortunately it can be easy to get fooled into seeing correlations that don't exist.

cpncrunch 12y ago

Yes, it's a little more difficult pinning down problems with the human body than in a piece of code, and these kind of functional problems even seem to have stumped most of the medical profession. However I see it as an engineering challenge. Essentially you are looking at a complex system and trying to solve a problem in a piece of machinery that you don't have any information about. Sometimes working around bugs in android or iOS can involve similar detective work. In terms of IBS, there is very little doubt that in my own situation that stress causes the IBS rather than the other way around. Diarrhea during the week, followed by constipation during weekends. Or diarrhea preceeding before a novel event. These are repeatable and predictable - it just requires taking a close look at your situation and seeing if you can see any correlations. Unfortunately it can be easy to get fooled into seeing correlations that don't exist.